I've.... never seen the whole show, I might have to, when I eventually do my Transformers retrospect on YouTube where I watch all the TF shows starting with Generation One. But... I may not have to do Energon because TF Wiki literally lists everything that's wrong with it. (You gotta love TF Wiki, they do not hold back when something from Transformers is considerably low-par)

 

Energon is only bad if you only bother looking at the dubbed version. The original Japanese version Superlink is ok.

Prime...well, it's the only show that did so bad that the Japanese literally made up an entire short lived new incarnation of the franchise...simply because they were not interested in Prime Season 3 and needed something to fill the gap.

 

Never seen the original Superlink version, but the Energon dub is just... ugh.

I think I would tie it with the Japanese Headmasters cartoon, Transformers Animated (yes, I must be the only person in existence that doesn't like this show due to the excessive amount of fanservice it had and a lot of mishandled ideas and characters) and Transformers Prime as my least favorite Transformers shows.

 

Energon is the definition of "lost in Translation", since a lot of the crazy nonsensical shit in Energon is actually explained and makes sense in Superlink.

 

Well, that's a bit of a relief... though I don't think it would be enough to save the somewhat lackluster animation.

 

If you asked me this before 2015, I would've said yes. But with RID and Cyberverse... idk really

 

I suppose the Prime Wars Trilogy is worse, but it only aired on some obscure streaming platform.

 

I haven't watched the whole unicron trilogy yet, though I know Energon is supposed to suck by reptutation and from what little I have seen I detested the godawful CGI that Energon and Cybertron used to animate the Transformers over the otherwise hand-drawn standard-anime backgrounds and humans.

Really though, it can't be any worse than Headmasters. And I'm actually not sure what's a more unforgiveable sin: trying to do something new and unique and failing at it like Energon seemed to? or aiming so low that even your apparent success is still bland slog of a disappointment like Headmasters was?

If my rewatch project ever makes it that far I'm not looking forward to watching it. But on the other hand, Headmasters gave me a spectacular amount of material to mock and snark at, so maybe there's an upside in watching a terrible series  

 

I find it soul-crushing that this is even a question. Once upon a time there’d be no consideration over whether or not Energon is the worst, but given the rapid decline in quality of serialized TF media post-TFA, I can understand the doubt. We, as a species, should be far, far better than Energon, not just “barely” better.

That said, I still believe Energon to be the worst for a few reasons. First off, while yes Superlink is better, it’s only better in that it actually makes sense. As in, the viewer is never left, quite literally, dazed and confused. For as bad as RID15 and Cyberverse are, they at least have the crux of being targeted towards a younger demographic. And whilst Cyberverse is almost insultingly dumbed down, it is at least produced to a consistent, understandable quality.

Arguably the closest contender for the crown of shit is Prime Wars, which is arguably even less forgivable due to being more limited, more modern, and targeted at an older generation.

But Energon was a total and utter train wreck of shear incompetence. Literal, actual nonsense writing, characters with wrong names, unfinished animation, deliberate dub changes contrary to the actual animation, and utterly shit voice direction and dubbing. The kind of amateur- no, that’s an insult to amateurs. It was the kind of actual garbage that makes me shake my head in contempt and jealously whenever literally anything else is called the worst TF cartoon ever. Contempt over the hyperbole of putting anything below this show, and jealously over the fact that statement is usually said because whoever made it hasn’t actually seen the show.

Energon was a botch job, and a botch job on an already terrible show. Superlink sucks, bad. It’s terribly animated, terribly written, and terribly plotted. Combined with the awful dub work, Energon more often than not plays out like actual nonsense. It’s not even funny or interesting in how bad it is, it’s just... nothing. There’s nothing there, because it’s all been lost in translation.

But the designs were actually really, really cool. The toys deserved a better commercial for them.

Oh, it really can.

Headmasters is slow, boring, stupid and cheaply made, but the sentences at least make sense.

 

There’s nothing really wrong with cyberverse except the toyline but rid has a lot of issues

 

There is NO WAY you can compare those to to Energon. Energon was INCOMPREHENSIBLE NONSENSE with NO love behind it from the production team.

I am glad to agree to disagree on liking /disliking Cyberverse or RID15 but they are shows who's cast, animation team, and writers were/are vocally passionate about the work that they do and both programs are obviously written by Transformers fans or at least writers who did their homework. The animation in both programs is also a YMMV situation. I think RID looked great and Cyberverse is ok to good. Energon is BAD.

Every fan has preferred executions for TF but the issues with Energon weren't even about that. The show doesn't even rise remotely close to a level that would justify a place in a 'conflicting visions on Transformers' discussion. It was eyesore gibberish poorly translated from Japanese eyesore self-consistently broody gibberish.

 

It was.

Then the Prime Wars Trilogy happened.
I guess Prime Wars has something over Energon - character models weren't completely terrible and they didn't have static textures for faces - but the actual animation quality was about the same and the writing quality was arguably worse. Energon was largely the result of bad dubbing, Prime Wars just plain sucked all around.